Recently, as the vehicles are developed from a manual transmission vehicle to an automatic transmission vehicle and hybrid and electric vehicles, the number of ECUs increases. One vehicle is equipped with ten to no less than a hundred ECUs.
As seen from the accident due to sudden start of the vehicles by Toyota, damages due to malfunctions of ECUs frequently occur. The malfunctions of ECUs cause an increase in vehicle speed and impossibility of braking a vehicle, which the driver does not want in driving or starting the vehicle, not only in manual transmission or automatic transmission vehicles, but hybrid vehicles.
The reason of the malfunctions of the ECUs can fall into a software problem and a hardware problem.
The software problem is involved in bugs driving the ECUs in most cases. It is difficult to find out the reason of the software bugs and it is more difficult to access the information of the ECUs, because the manufacturers of the vehicles are unwilling to open the information for security.
The hardware problem is unaccountable noise generated in ECU connectors (hereafter, referred to as a “system noise”). The system noise causes a malfunction in the output of the ECUs by generating undesired signals at the input of the ECU.
Technologies of distinguishing malfunctions generated in a vehicle in various ways have been proposed.
For example, a technology of removing an abnormal phenomenon that a driver does not want, by determining whether ‘sudden start control conditions’ are satisfied, by comparing a desired number of revolutions and the actual number of revolutions of an engine, and controlling the number of revolutions of the engine in accordance with the determining result, has been proposed in the related art.
Further, a technology of determining a malfunction by determining the traveling status of a vehicle on the basis of the vehicle information such as the speed of the vehicle, the number of revolutions of the engine, and the positional value of gears, and finding out the brake position according to the traveling status of the vehicle, has been proposed. Further, a technology of finding out a malfunction by finding out the status of the acceleration pedal or the brake pedal by means of a sensor in order to diagnose a malfunction in the engine has been proposed.
However, the technologies of monitoring and distinguishing malfunctions in the related art have a problem in that there is a limit in finding out the reasons of problems in an ECU and it is difficult to take measures against other situations except for the acceleration pedal or the brake pedal, because they use the values resulting from analysis of the information outputted by OBD (On Board Diagnostics).
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.